In a small business, staff are often asked to do a combination of lots of jobs. We have salespeople directing jobsites, office managers doing cold calling, and production folks doing marketing.

BUT, it’s important to recognize that the job you hired someone to do may be very different from the job they’re actually doing. When you give a personality test such as a Caliper, you are normally giving it for the one role you’re filling, not tasks from other roles that require different tendencies.

For example, you may have hired someone as an Office Manager to reconcile QuickBooks, schedule jobs, and process payments. But if they’re spending much of their time cold calling sales prospects, those responsibilities may be so far outside their natural personality and strengths that they experience a significantly more stress.

We’ve all been there. We’re asked to do things that are outside of our comfort zone all the time.

Sure.

If an introverted mother has an extroverted child, she can’t just quit because she can’t stand all the toddler’s chatter. But in a job situation, if too many tasks are not compatible with the staff member’s personality, they will quit.

So how can you tell if what you’re asking a staff member to do is outside of their comfort zone?

1. One-on-one weekly meetings where you can take the temperature of someone’s happiness in their role. Ask them what percentage of their role stresses them out, and if it’s over 20-30%, you’ll know you have a potential retention risk.
2. Every 6 months or so, have your staff write out their job description. Look for things that are beyond the scope of their job title and ensure they are comfortable with those tasks.

As your business gets larger, you will naturally “silo” the positions on your org chart. A larger office will start to see a salesperson spending 95% of their day selling. And an OA in will spend 95% of their day on admin work.

Until then, keep your eye out for folks who seem more stressed than their workload suggests.

They may not be overworked, but rather overwhelmed with tasks that don’t come naturally to them.